Every year, we honor those healthcare professionals who are being the most innovative in their fields. Whether that is integrating acupuncture into their medical practice, developing new technology for managing patient care, or increasing the number of livers available for transplants, these folks deserve recognition for the work they are doing to move their industry forward. These are our healthcare heroes.
Ann Hutton & The Caring Connections Program
Caring Connections provides group grief counseling to dozens of Utah suicide and traumatic death survivors every year. Facilitated by the University of Utah’s College of Nursing, these groups would be impossible without a selfless group of more than 50 volunteers. For six weeks a year, for the past two decades, these social workers, psychologists, advanced practice nurses, counselors, and chaplains have donated their time and expertise to guide survivors through their grief.
Barry Rose | Manager, Crisis Services | University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute
As the Crisis Services Manager, Barry Rose is dedicated to helping those suffering from mental health crises. At the University of Utah Neuropsychiatric Institute, Rose oversees programs that allow people in crisis to find help via phone, text, or anonymous email. Rose’s talent in making sure those in crisis know they are available and waiting at a moment’s notice. In addition to promoting the services currently available, he is always pushing to improve access. He was part of the team that went to the Utah Attorney General’s Office to create SafeUT, an app that gives youth in the state access to a confidential crisis line. Now, he is working with another team to get legislation passed on a state and eventually national, 3-1-1 crisis line, making Mr. Rose one of our most worthy healthcare heroes.
The Dental Clinic At Roseman University | Roseman University of Health Sciences
The Dental Clinic at Roseman University is always looking for innovative ways to improve the healthcare of its patients. Over the past two years, they have worked tirelessly on a new program, offering the clinic’s patients necessary dental care at affordable costs. Created for patients without dental insurance, the Dental Clinic is helping improve the oral health of the community by providing access to preventative dental care. . The clinic provides an affordable option for families without a dentist, who are underinsured or are uninsured.
Dustin Monroe, MD | Pediatric Intensivist| Timpanogos Regional Hospital
Dr. Dustin Monroe has been the key to expanding pediatric care at Timpanogos Regional Hospital as its first pediatric intensivist. In Utah County, parents often have to make the heart-breaking decision between being miles away from home with their sick children or staying home to care for other responsibilities. But since Dr. Monroe’s initial consultation, he has helped create accessible pediatric care. In the ten months since the expansion of pediatric services, has helped consult on the cases of more than 3,000 children in their emergency room. Dr. Monroe has also helped recruit expert pediatric specialists to the hospital including pediatric cardiology, pediatric GI, cranial facial surgery, and pediatric endocrinology.
Eric Overton | Owner, Physician | Eric Overton MD
Dr. Eric Overton brings a visionary approach to medicine and wellness to Utah. His concierge integrative medical practice focuses on delivering both full-spectrum primary care and progressive preventative medicine in a contemporary space. Board-certified in Family Medicine and trained extensively in acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine, Dr. Overton is bringing the best of both Eastern and Western medical techniques to the community. With the attentiveness he shows to each of his patients he is not just improving the standard of care provided in Utah, he is redefining it.
Gabe Fontaine | Pharmacist | Intermountain Healthcare
Gabe Fontaine, PharmD, is more than a gifted caretaker. He is continually seeking to improve processes of care to benefit his patients. Dr. Fontaine recognized an opportunity to create faster care for stroke patients, dramatically shortening the amount of time it takes to administer alteplase, the clot-busting drug, which can quickly determine the difference between life and death. By utilizing his clinical knowledge, analytical skills, and team-building prowess to change the process for stroke patients, the time between a patient’s arrival at the emergency department and the time they receive alteplase has dropped from 40.5 to 33 minutes—which is dramatically below the national target of 60 minutes.
Jane Carlile | Volunteer Trustee | Intermountain Healthcare
As a former Provo City Councilwoman, founding leader of Utah County’s Circles Initiatives, and many other credentials, Jane Carlile has made remarkable contributions to the community. And for the past 15 years, she has played an integral role as a volunteer board member for Intermountain Healthcare and helped improve the health of Utah communities. As the bridge between the Utah County community and Intermountain in the construction of a $430 million replacement hospital project, she has provided extensive guidance to hospital leaders as well as residents as the project nears completion.
Kristen L. Carroll, M.D. | Chief of Staff, Orthopaedic Surgeon | Shriners Hospitals for Children- Salt Lake City
As Chief of Staff and orthopedic surgeon at Shriners Hospital for Children, Dr. Kristen Carroll is an exceptional leader. Her tenure with Shriners Hospital spans over three decades, and throughout her career, her compassion for her patients and her colleagues has been remarkable. Dr. Carrol is accredited with establishing the hospital’s new multidisciplinary specialty clinics where children with Cerebral Palsy, Skeletal Dysplasia, and Cornelia De Lange can see a number of specialists at once—greatly elevating collaboration of care, and convenience for families. Dr. Carroll is also a leader in the University of Utah’s Orthopaedic Group and covers trauma at Primary Children’s Hospital.
Richard Gilroy, MD and the Liver Transplant Team | Intermountain Medical Center
152 people are on the organ donor list in Utah waiting for a liver. On their behalf, Dr. Richard Gilroy and the Liver Transplant Team at Intermountain Medical Center pioneered an innovative method to increase the number of available organs to give patients a second chance at life. They found a way to use a liver that was damaged by Hepatitis C safely, then cure the damaged liver of its disease. When it comes to innovation in healthcare, the members of the Liver Transplant Team are the definition of outside-the-box thinking with their work to increase the supply of available organs for those in need.
Mark Jensen, MD | Plastic and Reconstructive Surgeon | Revere Health
Dr. Mark Jensen is a plastic and reconstructive surgeon at Revere Health and a firm believer in the importance of giving back. As one of our healthcare heroes, of his biggest passions is helping women regain confidence after a breast cancer diagnosis, and currently serves on the Leadership Board for Breast Cancer of Excellence in Utah Valley. Dr. Jensen is also the only plastic surgeon in Utah County who visits the American Fork Wound Clinic, and Utah Valley wound clinic, to perform surgeries and giving care to those in need. In addition to serving his community here in Utah, Dr. Jensen has provided medical care around the world to underserved communities in Johannesburg, South Africa, and Lima, Peru.
Mark Meadows | CEO | Lone Peak Hospital
During Mark Meadows’ 44 years in healthcare, he has maintained the heart of a compassionate caregiver while stepping up as a phenomenal community leader. With roles from ambulance driver, nurse, OR tech, Desert Storm army veteran and Chief Nursing Officer to Vice President of Business Development, project manager, and CEO, his legacy is one of sharp innovation, boundless energy, exciting growth, profound humility, and inspired leadership. His mantra has always been that there is no job too big or task too small if it helps the patient.
Mark Stevens, MD | Former Chief of Trauma, Intermountain Medical Center | Intermountain Medical Center
Trauma surgeon Mark Stevens served as medical director of Trauma Services at Intermountain Medical Center and LDS Hospital for 27 years, from 1989 to 2016. During that time, he spent approximately 2,000 nights on call at the hospital, including 14 Christmases, 14 Christmas Eves, and 14 Thanksgivings caring for 16,000 injured patients. While he has since stepped down as Chief of Trauma at Intermountain Medical Center, he continues to practice as a general and trauma surgeon while serving on the American College of Surgeons’ Committee to help certify trauma centers across the United States. Mr. Stevens is an incredible healthcare hero!
Nathan Peterson | Community Health Director | Intermountain Healthcare
Nathan Peterson serves as the Community Health Director for the five Salt Lake Valley Intermountain Healthcare hospitals and two Wasatch Back hospitals. His role has been to increase access to behavioral health care by expanding a network of providers dedicated to providing service to underserved populations in the Salt Lake Valley and the Wasatch Back. In his community roles, he has provided executive leadership and management for a variety of public health services, including Maternal Child Health, Public Health Nursing, Public Health Emergency Preparedness, WIC/Nutrition, Environmental Health, and Community Health Education programs for a county population of 210,000.
Pinpoint Team | Revere Health
Population health data and analytics are becoming increasingly important as the healthcare industry shifts from a fee-based model to a value-based model. However, collecting that data, analyzing it, and sorting it into something that provides actionable insight is challenging. Revere Health’s data analytics team saw these challenges and created PinPoint. Jonathan Keller, lead architect and database programmer, and Caleb MacDonald, lead programmer, designed PinPoint to allow care providers to track their goals and quickly determine what action items need to be completed for each patient. Since its clinic-wide implementation in Q4 of 2017, providers and staff have seen great success. They find that meeting value-based care goals is much easier if they can see how their patients are doing in real time.
Sean Bennett, RN | House Supervisor| Timpanogos Regional Hospital
For the past several years, House Supervisor Sean Bennett, RN, has connected Timpanogos Regional Hospital with their sister hospital on the small island of Savai’i, Samoa. Taking annual trips with 20-30 nursing students, he helps provide medical screenings and health education to approximately 5,000 children. In 2017, Mr. Bennett approached the Timpanogos administration to adopt Malietoa Tanumafili II Hospital with the goal to provide them with much needed medical supplies. Since then, fellow employees and community volunteers have helped to gather anything that might be useful for the Samoan hospital. In one year, Sean and his co-workers gathered more than $300,000 worth of donations. Sean hopes to exceed this donation amount every year.
Teresa Rivera | President and CEO| UHIN
Teresa Rivera has dedicated her more than 40-year career to improving healthcare through innovation. As president and CEO of UHIN, she has championed the exchange of data between healthcare providers to ensure better care coordination at a lower cost, benefiting patients her entire career. Rivera has been instrumental in creating a Patient-Centered Data Home for people experiencing healthcare troubles outside of their home state. This data home has played an important part in connecting hospital systems across the US. Congratulations to Ms. Rivera on being one of our healthcare heroes!
Timpanogos Regional Hospital NICU Team | Timpanogos Regional Hospital
Life can be extremely difficult for families with infants in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). These sick babies are often hospitalized for weeks at a time. Often parents of sick children live far away from the hospital and can’t be with their baby as often as they would like. After watching families struggle with these challenge at Timpanogos Regional Hospital, NICU nurses came up with an idea to use iPads as a way for parents to check on their infants whenever they couldn’t be at the hospital. The Mom2Baby proposal has evolved into the NICVIEW® webcam system, and now each of the 24 Isolettes in the NICU features the ability for parents to check on their little ones, 24/7.
Vamsee Yaganti, MD | Cardiologist | St. Mark’s Hospital
Dr. Vamsee Yaganti, an interventional cardiologist, has introduced and strengthened cutting-edge interventional cardiology procedures at St. Mark’s Hospital. Dr. Yaganti has initiated and influenced many innovative procedures, including the Watchman procedure, MitraClip, Transcatheter Aortic Valve Replacement (TVAR), and valve-in-valve procedures. He also became Utah’s first interventional cardiologist to use a new minimally invasive technique during a TAVR procedure that avoided cutting down an artery. Because of Dr. Yaganti, St. Mark’s is one of three hospitals in Utah performing a triple-combination of TAVRS, MitraClip and Watchman procedures. Within the 178 hospitals managed by Hospital Corporation of America (HCA) worldwide, St. Mark’s is one of only ten hospitals performing all three.Learn more about our 2018 Healthcare Heroes honorees by watching the YouTube videos below:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLNqiA3p7PE6Dv4F-tTmzY6CeHB-s18Ssh